One of the minds behind one of Nollywood’s most talked-about current projects, Shanty Town, is a Nigerian actress and filmmaker who has been promoting and talking about her most recent work, which is currently available on Netflix. By all accounts, the program is a success and a genuine smash.
Ini Edo met with the nice folks from Wake Up Nigeria at TVC during her publicity tour for the program. Ini Edo was asked a very significant and profound issue during her interview: does she have any intentions to genuinely assist or rehabilitate the individuals who are now residing in these shantytowns?
It’s a question that would have caught anybody off guard as I’m sure she was not expecting it. But here is what Ini Edo said when confronted with such a question.
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During her interview, Ini Edo was asked “Because of your personal experience when you went to one of such shanty towns, there is usually that empathy of okay, maybe we should earmark a percentage of the proceedings to help some of these people. Apart from this, trying to see if you can rehabilitate some of them. Are there any plans in the works for that?” Responding, Ini Edo said:
INI EDO: Uhmmm, I don’t really do something but my NGO does where we do, we try to empower women you know in small businesses, in tech. I also work with some networks who do all those rehabilitations, like what we do at TPH, I don’t know if you know about that. But for us, what we basically really wanted to do was to shed light on the story. To create the awareness, cuz first of all as a society, you want to be even sure that these things are happening for real. And then you begin to look at solutions. And then other than just rehabilitating them, there are people behind these shantys. There are people who are leveraging off this business. Do you understand? Let’s also not forget that there is organ harvesting, and then there is also putting guns in the hands of little boys who end up becoming like political thugs and what have you. So it’s a whole movement and awareness is what we wanted to first create. And then hopefully when the society is aware, then we can begin to see how can we really put a stop to these things? Or how can we help them? Just as you said, the rehabilitation is very necessary. After rehabilitation, they need to be able to have a life after that. Because otherwise, it is easy to fall back or easy to get back into those kinds of traps.
What do you think about what Ini Edo said? Do you think Shanty Town as a show did a good job of creating awareness about the things going on in the shantys, and also do you think that it is the job of filmmakers to fix the issues that they highlight in their projects?